Beekeeping Diary: Springtime

Ian Douglas celebrates the coming of spring with a trip to his beehives

It’s cold and the rain is coming down in occasional large drops, muddying the path and leaving splashes on my coat. The bees aren’t flying today, not here in Hampstead anyway.

I’ve been away from my hives for just over two months. I fed them in the depths of winter, a sticky Christmas present of sugar fondant. Now it’s time to feed them again and I have two large plastic pouches full of light plain syrup in my bag. The solid food sustains them, liquid encourages them to breed now the warmer weather’s coming.

Some kind soul has cleared away a lot of the undergrowth from around the apiary while I’ve been away. My two hives - one wooden, one plastic - sit at the edge of some allotments, where the ground is too stony and slopes too steeply for vegetables. Making a mental note to write a thank you email I step over the low green mesh fence surrounding them and listen.

London’s background hum of car engines and aeroplanes is low enough here to be able to pick up the sounds from inside the hive, and I can hear an encouraging rustling. I’m only intending to put the syrup in place then leave, so I decide to have a look without putting on my veil.

There’s a familiar hiss as I lift the roof off. A lot of the fondant is still there, but the bees have burrowed their way through it making a hole in the centre through which I can see them milling about near the surface. To make sure they find the syrup the pouch has to go over the hole, so I gouge away at the remaining fondant with my hive tool. The bees take this in good humour for a while, but when they start to fly up in larger numbers I retreat to put on some safer clothes.

I struggle into my tunic and veil but don’t light my smoker. I’m not going to dig any deeper into the hive, it’s too cold today and I don’t want to chill the interior. I go back to it and hack away at the fondant, making a hole big enough for the syrup pouch. A couple of stabs with a Stanley knife will let the food ooze out. I balance it in its place and put the roof back. Done. A few bees, intent on guarding their hive from this well-meant intrusion, fly around my face and land on my hands. I’m not wearing gloves and I have sugar on my fingers. This colony has always been a little bad tempered and I wonder if my season’s about to start with a sting or two, but they’re calm enough and I can brush them away without harm.

There’s a block of wood with a few holes cut out of it blocking the entrance and I think for a few moments about removing it. It’s there to cut down the effort the bees need to put in to defend themselves against big predators such as mice or early wasps, but makes it more difficult for them to come in and out in large numbers. I’ll leave it there for now.

I approach the other hive, a big purple plastic Beehaus, with less optimism. They were alive but feeble in December having suffered from a nasty attack of varroa, the horrible little parasitic mite, in Autumn. They had gone into winter weak and underpopulated, and I wasn’t carrying much hope about their chances of survival.

Every beekeeper in the country is feeling this anticipatory worry around now. The summer is spent building up to winter, then once the cold weather is past we creep towards our hives hoping for buzzy life and the sweet woody smell of new bees getting their work done, but it doesn’t always work that way.

The silence as I take off the roof confirms my fears and I see a sad little ball of dead bees sitting on the frames. The miticide treatment had been too late and they couldn’t sustain themselves, even with ample supplies. I’ll come back to clear up later this week.

The big rain drops are becoming more frequent as I wash the fondant off my hive tool and gratefully pull my coat on. One colony is doing well, one gone. The season’s work stretches out joyously in front of me despite the loss. I still have bees and spring is here. I go home cold, wet and, with understandable reservations, happy.